Recently some friends of mine and myself have been
struggling with uncertainty. We
have been entertaining the big life questions: how do you know what to do?
where to live? who to be in relationship with?
It seems to be a pretty common, human experience to feel a
sense of importance about living this one life we have been given in a way that
is meaningful.. that does our time here justice. And the pressure, the insane fear that comes with that , is
the idea that we might somehow mess it up.. we might make a mistake.. we might
misuse our opportunity. Robert
Frost says: “two paths diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled
by, and that has made all the difference”.
But what if there are not merely two paths, but three, or
six, or a dozen? What if they are
all more or less untraveled (they are surely untraveled by us), then how do we
choose? I think this fear of
making a mistake, of choosing wrong, runs deep within our souls. It can paralyze us into not choosing
anything.
I’m not sure how many of you will relate to this, but when I
was younger, we had these books called Choose
Your Own Adventures. How these
books worked is that at every crossroads the main character came to, you as the
reader got to choose what you wanted that character to do: to follow the bad
guy or to go home? To take the bus or get in the cab with the stranger? To go on the date or hang out with a
friend? The books could end in a myriad of ways depending on the choices that
you, the reader, made. In all
honesty, the amazing thing about Choose
Your Own Adventures was that you could cheat…. you could read ahead, figure
out if the path you were going to choose would lead to happiness or
disappointment, abundance or loss, death or life, and you could choose
accordingly. Maybe no one else did
that, but I remember acutely reading ahead to ensure that the path I was
choosing didn’t lead to destruction before I settled on any choice.
And here is the difficult thing about being human: life is
not a Choose Your Own Adventure book,
at least not in this sense. Sure,
we get to choose our own adventure, each and every day. However, we don’t get the luxury of
reading ahead. We can’t predict,
we can’t know, we can’t cheat…. we can’t verify that this or that treatment, or
career, or spouse, is going to lead to life and joy or death and despair. We don’t have the comfort of
knowing. So, all we are left with
is taking all the information we have, taking our emotions and our insights,
and making a guess.. choosing the adventure that feels the most right, that
feels hopeful, that feels best at that particular moment.
Sometimes our choice works out. Sometime, instead, the result is more painful than we could have every
imagined.
Amidst this realization, amidst the discomfort of living in
certainty, I have been searching for a silver lining.. for some glimpse of
hope. All that I can come up with
is this: the knowledge that we are not alone in this.
We are not the only person to ever be terrified of making a
mistake, of messing up our one, precious life. I am not the only person to be scared to my wits that I
might marry the wrong person.. just as others are not the only ones to be
fearful of going to the wrong college, or moving to the wrong state, or
choosing the wrong career, or of turning off life support for someone they love. Uncertainty, the helplessness that
comes from not being able to know the consequences of choosing or own adventure
ahead of time, is stifling, uncomfortable, excruciating at times.
The comfort is that we are not alone. That this is what it means to be human.
As humans I do not think we are promised that this life is
easy. I do think, however, that we
are blessed in the truth that we are not alone, that we are accompanied on this
journey, however uncertain it may be.
Today, perhaps we can move closer towards trusting that all will be well, we will be well, no matter what choices we make.
Perhaps we can rest in the certainty that amidst our uncertainty, we are held lovingly, completely, eternally, just as we are.
